A key role of IFLA as the international organisation for libraries is to facilitate exchange between colleagues around the world. As part of its 2021-2023 action plan, the Regional Division Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean committed to facilitate ‘pasantías’ or job-shadowing schemes to allow people to spend time seeing how libraries in different countries in the region work. The results are now in! 

During its first term, members of the IFLA Regional Division for Latin America and the Caribbean coming from several different countries recognized the need to create a space for  professional exchange among institutions of the Federation, to be coordinated by the national associations of each country.

In this context, the Argentine Library of Congress (BCN) together with the Association of Graduate Librarians of the Argentine Republic (ABGRA) designed a Library Professional Internships Exchange Programme to receive foreign professionals at BCN.

This Programme’s origins trace back to the agreement with FLACSO Ecuador through the National Association of Librarians “Eugenio Espejo” (ANABE) and to the conversations and agreement signed with the Bolivian Association of Librarians and, most recently, with the School of Library Science of the University of Antioquia, Colombia.

The main purpose of this space is to encourage reflection on the existing working methodologies of both institutions in question and to cooperate with the improvement of technical skills.

The professionals selected for this first experience were Silvia Ximena Vallejo Tobar, Coordinator, and Cristina Margarita Manosalvas Lopez, Acquisitions, in FLACSO Library, Ecuador. These colleagues could know more about our services and varied proposals, and could attend the IFLA MetLib Conference held this year in the City of Buenos Aires free of charge.

You can find out more about this work in this video.